RM_Indy writes that:

>Stock fuel system based on 700' asl is good to about 304hp at the crank or about 22% above stock >not the generous 30% you quote.

I am agreeing with you RM_Indy,
but there seems to be a little confusion.

I agree that the AFF and AAF registers that adjust short and long term fuel trim in the stock PCM computer's programming CAN ADJUST up to about 22%. If your fuel mix stays within about plus or minus 22% then the computer will successfully read the O2 sensor at part throttle and trim the fuel injector pulse durations so that the air to fuel is WOBBLES around a stoichiometric average. {I say WOBBLES because the PCM computer ON PURPOSE makes the mixture swing rich/lean/rich/lean so that the "3 Way Catalytic converter" can reduce NOx during the rich mixture swing.

However, the AFF and AAF have limits.
On a stock Dodge PCM they can't adjust to any high or low mixture whatsoever.
There is a limit when they both 'max out'.
{On the flex fuel vehicles like the 3rd Gen Ram's special E85 capable 4.7LV8 the fuel trims will have much higher limits and respond faster}

I am guessing the 30% E85 is slightly more than the PCM programming can successfully compensate for with the limits of the AFF and AAF.

At Wide Open Throttle the PCM computer's programming tells it to stop looking at the O2 sensor, and it uses fixed table values to 'estimate' what fuel injector pulse durations to use, without any guidance from the narrow range O2 sensor.

On the 1992-2001 modle yr 5.2/5.9V8 dyno runs where a wide range O2 sensor is monitoring the stock WOT fuel injector durations seem to result in air to fuels that begin around 13 at 2500 rpm and grow as rich as 11.5 at 4000 rpm.

Mods to stock engines that increase intake air volumetric efficiency or increase residual exhaust gas clearance from the cylinder (ported heads, longer duration cams, lower restriction exhausts, hacked IAT sensors) tend to drive WOT air to fuel ratios upward.

I agree that with a 30% addition of E85 at WOT the owner should be careful as he will not have the cooling effect of a very rich mixture to protect the hottest of the 8 exhaust valves or catalytic converter from too high exhaust gas temperature. That's why the factory makes the WOT air to fuel mixture so rich.

A cautious owner would mount a EGT probe in cylinders 7 or 8 before trying to go to WOT throttle on a 30% E85 mixture....especially since DCx has admitted that their cat cons fail easily and the many many posts of cracked heads in cylinders 7 and 8.

Sears sells a $40 multimeter with a Type K thermocouple that could be used for this if someone was on a tight budget.

Why burn a valve?
Why ruin a catalytic converter ?

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2006/10/adapter_lets_an.html

 

The really big problem with ethanol for vehicle fuel is the energy needed to produce it is about equal to the energy yield of the finished product. While sunlight is free and is the direct source of energy in ethanol, it takes plowing, planting, fertilizing, harvesting, fermenting and distilling plus all the human work involved in those processes before there is any ethanol for fuel.

But a lot of work has gone into reducing the biggest energy input - conversion of harvested corn to ehtanol. Things have improved already and further improvements have been demonstrated in model factories. Even more are at the engineering stage. And there are research leads that are not yet ready for engineering development.

Economically, ethanol now is not viable - it depends on tax breaks and direct subsidy.

None of this is all bad, but thinking ethanol is the way to get rid of imported oil is just not right.

 

Did somebody delete a bunch of posts from this thread?

 

Dark_Horse claimed I was repeating hearsay about E-85 and ethanol. Well, I remember growing up in northern Illinois and ethanol blended gasoline being sold in the Midwest to help with the gas crunch. My mother drove a 1975 Chrysler Newport, a vehicle that was one of the first designed to run on unleaded gasoline. The car developed problems, so my dad took it to a local mechanic. They put the car on the lift and a few moments later called my dad into the bay. The mechanic reached up, grabbed the flexible fuel line and tugged it. The gas line crumbled in his hands and he asked my dad, "Have you been running ethanol in your vehicle?" Well, my dad confirmed that he had, and the mechanic stated that ever since ethanol blends had come out, more vehicles were suffering from gummed up carburetors (and leaks) because the ethanol blend degraded the fuel rubber and the gaskets. It wasn't much longer before ethanol disappeared from the landscape.

Here is a neat website about how the much touted Honda Insight is a pile of crap http://www.hondasucks.ca/

The advent of ethanol, hybrids, and other cheap/high mileage vehicles is a band-aid fix for an impatient consumer base. I can get 35+ miles per gallon, on the highway, out of my 2002 2.2L Chevrolet Cavalier with 5-speed transmission PROVIDED that it is myself and my son riding in the car. Start adding more weight from cargo, and the mileage drops. That's why I scoff at these so called "high mileage" vehicles. It's all crap.

IMHO (and that's all it is -- my honest opinion), biodiesel is the best fuel for the future. Diesel engines are far more efficient than gasoline or gasoline blend vehicles. VW has developed diesel engines for their sedans that are capable of 40+ miles per gallon. Diesel trucks can haul more cargo than a gasoline powered truck, and the mileage number hardly change whether loaded or empty.

In any event, anyone who wants to risk running E-85 in a vehicle not designed for it does so at his own risk.

 

If you are looking for a way to make your first billion $,
find a way to separate the 8% ethanol from the 92% water in the mash
without having to heat the water to the boiling point of ethanol.

If you are looking for a way to make your second billion $,
find a way to cheaply turn cellulose back into glucose from which it is made
because the guys using 'Jungle Rot' fungus are having trouble doing this cheaply
at least so far.

If you are looking for a way to make your third billion $,
find a way to genetically modify a pine tree so that it produces
much more sap, and that sap can be distilled to diesel fuel.
North Carolinians are called 'Tar Heels' because in colonial times
pine trees were slashed with V's like maple trees,
and the sap was distilled into two products:
"Kerosene" for lamps where it competed against
expensive sperm whale oil (which has no smell & little soot)
and the more viscous pitch for waterproofing barrels and ships.
There was always leftover 'heavy tar' that was spread on the dirt NC roads.

Later when Col Drake drilled the first oil well in Pennsylvania
he distilled the crude into his own version of 'Kerosene'
and threw the rest of the oil away (there was no market for gasoline for 20 more years).
Kerosene from crude oil had less 'Pinesol' smell and people
liked it better and it was far cheaper than whale oil.
This drove pine tree sap tapping in the Carolinas out of business.

Sperm Whale oil had a come-back when the 'liquid wax esters' in it
were found to be great for automatic transmission oils.
When Sperm Whale hunting was banned in the 1970s,
The US Agriculture Dept gave
the retired ex-head of the Mobil One synthetic oil development project
a research grant to turn vegetable oil into 'liquid wax esters'
This is how the Universal Lubricants company was born
and 'red bottle' Lubegard ATf additive was invented.

http://www.lubegard.com/about.html

 

You are quoting something a mechanic said in the 1970's. In 1970 running ethanol on a vehicle wasn't the best of ideas. Like I posted before, in 1988, the government mandated that all vehicles be able to run on gasoline with 10% ethanol added. Since car makers don't want to get sued, they don't just engineer their vehicles to run on 10% ethanol laden gasoline, they engineer them to withstand much more than that.

If Ethanol will kill all fuel related components, how can you explain how Subarus, Mustangs, DSM's etc can all run it with only having larger fuel pump/injectors? Plenty of Subaru people have been running 100% E85 since 2002 with no problems at all on stock fuel lines.

I also disagree with the notion that 22% more horsepower equates to 22% more fuel needed (unless I misunderstood what you said). That's saying it's a 1:1 ratio. 1% more HP to 1% more fuel which isn't true.


See link below for the actual studies on the total energy created/lost in the production of ethanol. As you can see, only 1 study out of the 6 most recent ones found negative energy creation from the production of ethanol. http://www.eesi.org/programs/agricul...20update_2.htm

Furthermore, the study that showed negative energy has been widely discredited by most researchers, as Pimentel used outdated estimates and/or unsubstantiated estimates in his findings.


Biodiesel is definitely a great fuel and would replace diesel in a second if it were cheaper and more available. I'm interested to see how the car makers cope with low sulfur content diesel fuel.

 

Read what I wrote and see I didn't make the "negative energy" claim.

The info in the site you quote is interesting and reflects what i said about ethanol plants getting better. But important things are ignored. When you accept the +34% gain, that means using the energy of 1 gal of gas will give you ethanol energy 1.34 times that. And that's good. But the energy calcualtion on that site ignores the huge investment in ethanol plants, farming equipment, special ethanol distribution systems and so on. Not only does that cost $$, but building that infrastructure costs energy as well. Most such calculations also ignore the energy costs involved with all the workers needed to produce ethanol. Finally, increasing vehicle mileage 34% accomplishes the same thing with no fudge factors (tho it might reduce fun factor).

Despite all those bad things, I believe it may be possible to improve ethanol production efficiency to make it a viable fuel. And all the subsidies and research money being used is the way to do it. Bottom line: we are not at the point when ethanol as fuel really helps the petroleum consumption problem. It might in the future, but hasn't yet.


One reason is that biodesiel has a higher energy production yeild is that it doesn't require the energy-intensive purification step that ethanol does. And if the residue from biodiesel production can be used for ethanol production (third $billion$ award "offered" by another poster), things get better still.

Allen

 

The manufacturers aren't the ones who are going to have to cope with lower sulfur content, it's the consumers. Sulfur is added for lubrication much like lead was to gasoline.

 

Well, I have burned through the entire tank of 70% gasoline/30% E85 (I drive a lot). I achieved around 16mpg with this blend, while normal driving with pure gasoline equates to around 17mpg. 30% E85 equated to a 6% drop in fuel economy for me. Of course, I was flooring it all of the time too just to see if the butt dyno felt anymore power. There may have been more power, but it could also have been in my head. I know that in other platforms, running E85 does infact equal more power/torque (dyno proven), but to generalize that it would transfer over to all platforms would be crazy.

Since unleaded and E85 are the same price where I live, there's no point to burn E85 at all for me in this vehicle. But I did get the truck to pass emissions and spent no extra money, so I accomplished what I set out to do. I also proved (if only to myself) that running 1 tank of 30% E85 does no apparent harm. No harm = the truck still runs just as well as it did before the tank of E85.

FWIW, the person I know that drives a WRX just passed Colorado emissions with no cats running 100% E85. Lets see any gasoline powered vehicle do that. Roadside tests are great since they can't do a visual inspection.

 

a webpage that claims to be able to provide answers:

http://www.theautochannel.com/news/2...06/027695.html

direct link

www.hagerty.com/ethanol